Parental alienation involves the systematic brainwashing, poisoning and manipulation of children with the sole purpose of destroying a loving and warm relationship they once shared with a parent. My story involves this form of child abuse & exploring the bias favouring a mother in the social ecosystem around Family Law.

I have met and heard the tragic stories of many parents. PA is a function, by and large, of a custodial ex-partner, although some alienation can start while the couple is still together.

This blog is a story of experiences and observations of dysfunctional Family Law (FLAW), an arena pitting parent against parent, with children as the prize. Due to the gender bias in Family Law, that I have observed, this Blog has evolved from a focus solely on PA to one of the broader Family/Children's Rights area and the impact of Feminist mythology on Canadian Jurisprudence and the Divorce Industry.

Saturday, July 31, 2010

The month of June when we observe Father's Day is a good time to review some of the injustices committed against fathers
by family courts. Family courts routinely deprive divorced fathers not
only of their own children, but even many constitutional rights.

For
example, do you think judges should have the power to decide to which
religion your children must belong and which churches they may be
prohibited from attending? In December 2009 a Chicago judge did exactly
that.

Cook County Circuit Judge Edward Jordan issued a
restraining order to prohibit Joseph Reyes from taking his
three-year-old daughter to any non-Jewish religious activities because
his ex-wife argued that would contribute to "the emotional detriment of
the child." Mrs. Rebecca Reyes wants to raise her daughter in the
Jewish religion, and the judge sided with the mother. Joseph Reyes'
divorce attorney, Joel Brodsky, when he saw the judge's restraining
order, said, "I almost fell off my chair. I thought maybe we were in
Afghanistan and this was the Taliban."

Mr. Reyes took
his daughter to church anyway and let the Chicago media know about it.
Soon he was back in court to be prosecuted for contempt in violating
the family court order. The good news is that Reyes, fortunately, drew
another Cook County judge, Renee Goldfarb, who ruled on April 13, 2010
that Reyes can take his daughter to "church services during his
visitation time if he so chooses." Judge Goldfarb said her decision to
let Reyes take his daughter to church was based on "the best interest
of the child," but then criticized Reyes for going public with his
case.

This case is a good illustration of the
dictatorial power of the family courts. Both judges purported to decide
what church a child can attend based on the judge's personal opinion
about what is "the best interest of the child." The choice of a church
should be none of the government's business, even if the parents are
divorced, and "best interest" should be decided by parents, not judges.

Not
only did the family court try to take away a father's parental rights
and his freedom of religion rights, but also his First Amendment
free-speech rights. The second judge severely criticized Reyes for
telling the media about his case. But publicity was the reason the
family court backtracked from sending Reyes to jail for violating the
restraining order. It's important to shine the light of publicity on the
outrageous denial of parental rights by the family courts.

In
another divorce case last year, a family court in New Hampshire (where
the state motto is "Live Free or Die") ordered ten-year-old Amanda
Kurowski to quit being homeschooled by her mother and instead to attend
fifth grade in the local public school. Judge Lucinda V. Sadler
approved the court-appointed expert's view that Amanda "appeared to
reflect her mother's rigidity on questions of faith" and that Amanda
"would be best served by exposure to multiple points of view."

Where
did family court judges get the power to decide what church and what
school the children of divorced parents must attend? Family court
judges have amassed this extraordinary power by co-opting and changing
the definition of a time-honored concept: "the best interest of the child."

This
rule originally came from English common law as compiled by William
Blackstone in 1765, and meant that parents are presumed to act in their
own children's best interest. For centuries, English and American
courts honored parents' rights by recognizing the legal presumption that
the best interest of a child is whatever a fit parent says it is, and
should not be second-guessed by a judge.

However, when
U.S. state legislatures revised their family-law statutes in the
1970s, the "best interest of the child" became disconnected from
parents' decisions. Family courts assumed the discretion to decide the
best interest of children of divorced and unmarried parents, and enforce
their opinions by using their power to send fathers to jail and to
tell them how they must spend their money.

The notion
that persons other than parents should decide what is in a child's best
interest is illustrated by the slogan "it takes a village to raise a
child." Those who use that slogan understand "village" to mean
government officials and employees of the courts, the public schools,
and the departments of children and family services.
The "best
interest" rule is totally subjective; it's a matter of individual
opinion. Parents make thousands of decisions about their children, and
should have the right to make their decisions even if they contravene
so-called experts. Whether the decision is big (such as where to go to
church or school), or small (such as playing baseball or soccer), there
is no objective way to say which is "best."

Since
judges are supposed to base their decisions on evidence presented in
open court, and there is no objective basis for deciding thousands of
questions involved in raising a child, judges often call on the
testimony of expert witnesses. A big industry has grown up of
psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, custody evaluators, and
counselors who are eager to collect fees for giving their opinions.
Having opinions produced by persons with academic degrees is a way to
make subjective and arbitrary judgments appear objective. With the
volume of cases coming through family courts, judges can evade
responsibility for controversial decisions by rubber-stamping opinions
of these court-appointed experts.

Sometimes these
rulings are against women, but most decisions are against men,
especially fathers. It's time to call a halt to the practice of letting
family court judges make decisions that are rightfully the prerogative
of parents.

Putting Men in Debtors' PrisonsDid
you know that a family court can order a man to reimburse the
government for the welfare money, falsely called "child support," which
was paid to the mother of a child to whom he is not related? Did you
know that, if he doesn't pay, a judge can sentence him to debtor's
prison without ever letting him have a jury trial?
Did you know
that debtor's prisons (putting men in prison because they can't pay a
debt) were abolished in the United States even before we abolished
slavery, but that they exist today to punish men who are too poor to
pay what is falsely called "child support"?

Did you
know that when corporations can't pay their debts, they can take
bankruptcy, which means they pay off their debts for pennies on the
dollar, but a man can never get an alleged "child support" debt forgiven
or reduced, even if he is out of a job, penniless and homeless,
medically incapacitated, incarcerated (justly or unjustly), can't afford
a lawyer, serving in our Armed Forces overseas, or never owed the
money in the first place?

Did you know that when a
woman applying for welfare handouts lies about who is the father of her
child, she is never prosecuted for perjury? Did you know that judges
can refuse to accept DNA evidence showing that the man she accuses is
not the father? Did you know that alleged "child support" has nothing
to do with supporting a child because the mother has no obligation to
spend even one dollar of it on a child, and in many cases none of the
"support" money ever gets to a child because it goes to fatten the
payroll of the child-support bureaucracy? These are among the
injustices that the feminists, and their docile liberal male allies,
have inflicted on men.

Most of these family court injustices are caused by the Bradley Amendment,
named for its sponsor former Democratic Senator from New Jersey and
presidential candidate Bill Bradley. That 1986 federal law prohibits
retroactive reduction of alleged "child support" even in the
circumstances listed above. The Bradley law denies bankruptcy
protections, overrides all statutes of limitation, and forbids judicial
consideration of obvious inability to pay. Most Bradley-law victims
never come to national attention because, as Bernard Goldberg wrote in
his book Bias, mainstream media toe the feminist propaganda line,
denigrating men, especially fathers, and using the epithet "deadbeat
dads."

But one egregious case did make news in 2009. Frank Hatley
was in a Georgia jail for more than a year for failure to pay alleged
"child support" even though a DNA test nine years earlier, plus a
second one in 2009, proved that he is not the father. His ex-girlfriend
had lied and claimed he was. The August 21, 2001 court order, signed
by Judge Dane Perkins, acknowledged that Hatley is not the father, but
nevertheless ordered him to continue paying and never told him he could
have a court-appointed lawyer if he could not afford one.
Hatley
subsequently paid the government (not the mom or child) thousands of
dollars in "child support." Even after he was laid off from his job
unloading charcoal grills from shipping containers and reduced to living
in his car, he continued making payments out of his unemployment
benefits.

But he didn't pay enough to
satisfy the avaricious child-support bureaucrats, so Judge Perkins
ruled Hatley in contempt of court and sent him to jail without any jury
trial. With the help of a Legal Services lawyer, he was released
from jail and relieved from future assessments, but (because of the
Bradley Amendment) the government demanded that Hatley continue paying
at the rate of $250 a month until he paid off the $16,398 debt the
government claimed he accumulated earlier (even though the court then
knew he was not the father). He paid the debt down to $10,000 but was
jailed for six months in 2006 for falling behind on payments during a
period of unemployment. When he became unemployed and homeless in 2008,
he was jailed again.
Altogether, Hatley paid so-called "child
support" for 13 years and spent 13 months in jail because of a woman's
lie, the Bradley Amendment, the ruthless "child support" bureaucracy,
and the bias of the family court against fathers.

In
2009, the court relieved Hatley of any future child support payments
(probably because of press publicity about this case) but did not
restore his driver's license. This system is morally and
constitutionally wrong and the Bradley Amendment is particularly evil,
yet all authorities say the court orders were lawful.

Another
type of feminist indignity is the use in divorce cases of false
allegations of child sexual abuse in order to gain child custody and
the financial windfall that goes with it. Former Vancouver, Washington,
police Officer Ray Spencer
spent nearly 20 years in prison after being convicted of molesting his
two children who are now adults and say it never happened.

The
son, who was 9 years old at the time, was questioned, alone, for
months until he said he had been abused in order to get the interrogator
to leave him alone. The daughter, who was then age 5, said she talked
to the interrogator after he gave her ice cream.

There
were many other violations of due process in Spencer's trial, such as
prosecutors withholding medical exams that showed no evidence of abuse,
and his court-appointed lawyer failing to prepare a defense, but the
judge nevertheless sentenced Spencer to two life terms in prison plus
14 years. Spencer was five times denied parole because he refused to
admit guilt, a customary parole practice that is maliciously designed
to save face for prosecutors who prosecute innocent men.

Depriving Men of Constitutional RightsFamily
courts routinely deprive men of their fundamental right to parent
their own children, by charging them with a wide variety of trivial
offenses. Family courts generally uphold feminists' demands to kick a
man out of his own home, and take control of their children and his
money, based on a woman's unsubstantiated allegations. The principal
tactics in this racket are domestic violence accusations and
court-issued restraining orders.

The Violence Against Women Act
(VAWA) was passed in 1994 as a payoff to the radical feminists for
helping to elect Bill Clinton President in 1992. Personal sponsorship of
this law was taken over by then-Senator Joe Biden.

VAWA
shows the hypocrisy of noisy feminist demands that we kowtow to their
ideology of gender neutrality, to their claim that there is no
difference between male and female, and to their opposition to
stereotyping and gender profiling. There is nothing sex neutral about
VAWA. It is based on the proposition that there are, indeed, innate
gender differences: men are naturally batterers and women are naturally
victims. VAWA is not designed to eliminate or punish violence, but to
punish only alleged violence against women. Most of the shelters financed by VAWA do not accept men as victims.

VAWA
has been known from the getgo as "feminist pork" because it puts $1
Billion a year of U.S. taxpayers' money into the hands of the radical
feminists. They have set up shop in domestic violence shelters where
they promote divorce, marriage breakup, hatred of men, and false
accusations, while rejecting marriage counseling, reconciliation,
drug-abuse treatment, and evidence of mutual-partner abuse. There is no
investigation or accountability for the taxpayers' money spent in these
shelters.

VAWA makes taxpayers' money
available to the feminists to lobby state legislators to pass feminist
laws, to train law enforcement personnel and judges in using the laws,
and to fund enforcement.
VAWA provides the woman with free
legal counsel to pursue her allegations, but not the man to defend
himself. He is on his own to find and pay a lawyer — or struggle
without one.

Feminists have changed state
laws in order to get family courts to operate on a loosey-goosey
definition of family violence. It doesn't have to be violent. It can
simply be what a man says or how he looks at a woman. It can even be
what a woman thinks he might do or say. Definitions of violence include
calling your partner a naughty word, raising your voice, causing
"annoyance" or "emotional distress," claiming to be "fearful," or just
not doing what your partner wants.

Feminists have persuaded most states to adopt mandatory arrest
laws. That means, when the police arrive at a disturbance and lack
good information on who is to blame, they are nevertheless legally
bound to arrest somebody. Three guesses who is usually arrested.

Feminists have lobbied most states into passing no-drop prosecution
laws. Those laws make the prosecutor legally bound to go forward with
prosecution even if the woman recants her charges or wants to drop
them. Studies show that women do recant or ask to drop the charges in
60% of criminal allegations, but the law requires prosecution against
the man to proceed regardless. Along with the loss of other
constitutional rights, the man thus loses his right to confront and
cross-examine his accuser.

VAWA has a built-in
incentive for the woman to make false charges of domestic violence
because she knows she will never be prosecuted for perjury. Charging
domestic violence practically guarantees she will get custody of the
children and sever forever the father's relationship with his children
even though the alleged violence had nothing whatever to do with any
abuse of the children. Judges are required to consider allegations of
domestic violence in awarding child custody, even though no evidence of
abuse was ever presented.

'Gamesmanship' of Restraining OrdersFamily
court judges issue restraining orders virtually for the asking,
without any evidence of actual domestic violence or even threat of
violence. The Illinois Bar Journal (June 2005) explained how
women use court-issued restraining orders as a tool for the mother to
get sole child custody and to bar the father from visitation. In big
type, the Journal proclaimed: "Orders of protection are designed to
prevent domestic violence, but they can also become part of the gamesmanship of divorce."

The
"game" is that mothers can assert falsehoods or trivial complaints
against the father, in order to get a restraining order based on the
presumption that men are naturally abusers of women. Restraining orders
are in reality a tactical legal maneuver familiar to all family court
attorneys as a way to obtain an order of contempt and unfairly increase
the leverage of one side (typically the woman) in bargaining with the
other (typically the man).

The Fourth Amendment
guarantees U.S. citizens the right to be "secure in their persons,
house, papers, and effects." But each year, restraining orders are
issued against at least two million men without proof or even evidence,
forcing innocent men out of their homes. In 33 states, fathers can be
thrown in jail for even a technical violation of a restraining order,
such as sending a child a birthday card or telephoning a child on an
unapproved day.

Family courts have avoided facing up to
whether the restraining orders issued against fathers are
constitutional. Accused criminals enjoy a long list of constitutional
rights, but feminists have persuaded judges to issue orders that
restrain actions of non-criminal husbands and fathers, and punish them
based on flimsy, unproved accusations. Most states do not require proof
by a clear and convincing standard of evidence. Even though
these restraining orders are issued without the due process required
for criminal prosecutions, they carry the threat of a prison sentence
for anyone who violates them.

The New Jersey Law Journal
reported that an instructor taught judges to be merciless to husbands
and fathers, saying, "Throw him out on the street, give him the clothes
on his back, and tell him 'See ya' around.'" People have a better
chance to prove their innocence in traffic court than when subjected to
a restraining order.

Too often, the restraining order
serves no legitimate purpose, but is just an easy way for one spouse to
get revenge or the upper hand in a divorce or child custody dispute.
Once a restraining order is issued, it becomes nearly impossible for a
father to regain custody or even get to see his own children. That is
the result even though the alleged domestic violence (which doesn't
have to be physical or proven) did not involve the children at all.

Probably
two million restraining orders are issued each year in domestic
relationships. These restraining orders almost certainly increase
violence and harm, because studies show that the safest place for adults
and children is in a home with two parents, rather than one that is
broken by a restraining order. In 1999 there were 58,200 abductions of
children by non-family members, a crime typically the direct result of
inadequate adult supervision. When an adult is ordered out of a home
based on some allegation of domestic violence, the children in that home
are no longer supervised, and victimization by crime (and accidents)
necessarily increases.

There is no evidence that the
millions of restraining orders issued annually each year increase the
overall safety of the applicants or their children, and most likely the
opposite is true.

It is false to claim that because
domestic violence often occurs behind closed doors, it is somehow
difficult to prove. In fact, real domestic violence is easier to prove
than most crimes. Medical record and forensic evidence is clear and
convincing for real domestic violence, and the time and place of the
crime are easy to determine, and a restraining order may be
appropriate.

What is difficult is to disprove false allegations of non-serious domestic violence, so a higher standard of proof is essential to sift fact from fiction.

It
seems elementary that husband and fathers who are accused of crimes by
their wives or girl friends should have the same constitutional rights
accorded to any criminal, but they do not in family courts. They are
routinely denied equal treatment under law, the right to a fair trial,
the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, the right to confront
accusers, and a court-appointed lawyer when they can't afford to hire
an attorney.
It's time to restore basic constitutional rights to
husbands and fathers and repudiate the feminist agenda that treats men
as guilty unless proven innocent.

VAWA
will be coming up for reauthorization soon, and it must be reformed.
Reforming the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is today's basic civil
rights issue. Domestic violence must be redefined to mean violence.
State laws must be changed to repeal mandatory arrest laws and no-drop
prosecution laws. We must eliminate the incentives for false
accusations of domestic violence, which include using restraining
orders as the "gamesmanship" for divorce, child custody, money, or
ownership of the family home.

Persons
accused of domestic violence, man or woman, are entitled to have
fundamental constitutional rights, including due process and
presumption of innocence until proven guilty by clear and convincing
evidence in court.

Favourite Quotes

“The job of a father is this : to help his children develop, to teach them to express and master their emotions; to avoid physiological distress, to provide a context for their experiences; to help them persevere, reach their goals and take on responsibilities; and to instil the roles of citizen, partner and parent. In short, it is to fill their bellies with bread, their brains with wisdom and their hearts with love and courage.” Camil Bouchard, “On Father’s Ground” 2002.

Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?" ~ George Bernard Shaw ~ also quoted by Robert F. Kennedy, US Senator and Presidential Candidate assassinated in 1968.

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. ~ Robert Frost

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. - Mahatma Gandhi

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Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

Western Australia (DST from last Sunday in Oct. to last Sunday in March)

Perth, Western Australia

Some Gems on relationships

Marriage is a relationship in which one person is always right, and the other is a husband.

The motto of this Father's Rights Activist

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again ... and who, at the worst, if he fails at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt,

Facts on violence in Canada Domestic and Otherwise

Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile, 2009.

Of the nearly 19 million Canadians who had a current or former spouse in 2009, 6.2% or 1.2 million reported they had been victimized physically or sexually by their partner or spouse during the five years prior to the survey. This proportion was stable from 2004 (6.6%), the last time the victimization survey was conducted, and down from 1999 (7.4%).

A similar proportion of men and women reported experiencing spousal violence during the five years prior to the survey. Among men, 6.0% or about 585,000, encountered spousal violence during this period, compared with 6.4% or 601,000 women.

Total 611, men 465, women 146Rate of homicides with firearms has increased 24% since 2002. Handgun use on increase (gangs don't register their weapons)Women victims 24% - lowest proportion everMen Victims 76%Both the rate of females killed (0.87 per 100,000 population), as well as the proportion(24%), were the lowest since 196162 spousal homicides - no change from 2007Lowest rate in 40 years45 women 17 (27.4%)men

Many DV homicides of men are not classified as such and this number is higher than 27.4%.

In 2009 based on a million couples it can fairly be said 999,998 wives do not kill their husbands and 999,995 husbands do not kill their wives. (See Pg. 15 chart modified from the rate per 100,000.)

In 2009, 49 women and 15 men were killed by a current or former spouse (excludes one same-sex spousal victim).

Total homicides 610, Men 450. Gang related 20.3 percent.69.1 % of firearm related deaths involved handgunsWomen 160, In 2009 it represented the second lowest proportion (26%) of female homicide victims since data were first collected. The rate of female victims has generally been declining since the late 1960s.

Profile

I am Politically active and right of centre on most issues with the odd exception such as legalization of "Mary Jane".
I advocate on changes to Family Law - an incredibly dysfunctional arena where parents are pitted against one another and children are the victims.
My picture will sometimes show me as a younger man simply because I like them.

An Alienated Child

Is a troubled child

American Coalition for Fathers & Children Petition

A quote by a well known Canadian Jurist

The Honorable Justice John Gomery of Canada stated, “Hatred is not an emotion that comes naturally to a child. It has to be taught. A parent who would teach a child to hate the other parent represents a grave and persistent danger to the mental and emotional health of that child.”

(The above quote arises from PSM vs. AJC, a decision rendered by Mr. Justice John Gomery on February 15 1991 (SCM 500-12-184613895), and confirmed by the unanimous judgment of the Court of Appeal on June 14 1991, the trial judge was confronted by a case involving four children caught up in a heated custody battle between their parents whereby the children became "catastrophically" alienated from their mother.)A good paper on PAS for lawyers by a lawyer, Anne-France Goldwater (Avocate), and excerpts from the above trial are located here.